"Oh, now I know-you're Mr. Schwirtz of the Lowry Paint Company, who had lunch with us and told me about the paint company-Mr. Julius Schwirtz."
"You got me.... Though the fellows usually call me 'Eddie'-Julius Edward Schwirtz is my full name-my father was named Julius, and my mother's oldest brother was named Edward-my old dad used to say it wasn't respectful to him because I always preferred 'Eddie'-old codger used to get quite het up about it. Julius sounds like you was an old Roman or something, and in the business you got to have a good easy name. Say, speaking of that, I ain't with Lowry any more; I'm chief salesman for the Ætna Automobile Varnish and Wax Company. I certainly got a swell territory-New York, Philly, Bean-Town, Washi'nun, Balt'more, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron, and so on, and of course most especially Detroit. Sell right direct to the jobbers and the big auto companies. Good bunch of live wires. Some class! I'm rolling in my little old four thousand bucks a year now, where before I didn't hardly make more 'n twenty-six or twenty-eight hundred. Keeps me on the jump alrightee. Fact. I got so tired and run-down-I hadn't planned to take any vacation at all, but the boss himself says to me, 'Eddie, we can't afford to let you get sick; you're the best man we've got,' he says, 'and you got to take a good vacation now and forget all about business for a couple weeks.' 'Well,' I says, 'I was just wondering if you was smart enough to get along without me if I was to sneak out and rubber at some scenery and maybe get up a flirtation with a pretty summer girl'-and I guess that must be you, Miss Golden!-and he laughs and says, 'Oh yes, I guess the business wouldn't go bust for a few days,' and so I goes down and gets a shave and a hair-cut and a singe and a shampoo-there ain't as much to cut as there used to be, though-ha, ha!-and here I am."
"Yes!" said Una affably....
Miss Una Golden, of Panama and the office, did not in the least feel superior to Mr. Eddie Schwirtz's robust commonness. The men she knew, except for pariahs like Walter Babson, talked thus. She could admire Mamie Magen's verbal symphonies, but with Mr. Schwirtz she was able to forget her little private stock of worries and settle down to her holiday.
Mr. Schwirtz hitched forward in his rocker, took off his derby, stroked his damp forehead, laid his derby and both his hands on his stomach, rocked luxuriously, and took a fresh hold on the conversation:
"But say! Here I am gassing all about myself, and you'll want to be hearing about Sandy Hunt. Seen him lately?"
"No, I've lost track of him-you do know how it is in such a big city."
"Sure, I know how it is. I was saying to a fellow just the other day, 'Why, gosh all fish-hooks!' I was saying, 'it seems like it's harder to keep in touch with a fellow here in New York than if he lived in Chicago-time you go from the Bronx to Flatbush or Weehawken, it's time to turn round again and go home!' Well, Hunt's married-you know, to that same girl that was with us at lunch that day-and he's got a nice little house in Secaucus. He's still with Lowry. Good job, too, assistant bookkeeper, pulling down his little twenty-seven-fifty regular, and they got a baby, and let me tell you she makes him a mighty fine wife, mighty bright little woman. Well, now, say! How are you getting along, Miss Golden? Everything going bright and cheery?"
"Yes-kind of."
"Well, that's good. You'll do fine, and pick up some good live wire of a husband, too-"
"I'm never going to marry. I'm going-"
"Why, sure you are! Nice, bright woman like you sticking in an office! Office is no place for a woman. Takes a man to stand the racket. Home's the place for a woman, except maybe some hatchet-faced old battle-ax like the cashier at our shop. Shame to spoil a nice home with her. Why, she tried to hold up my vacation money, because she said I'd overdrawn-"
"Oh, but Mr. Schwirtz, what can a poor girl do, if you high and mighty men don't want to marry her?"
"Pshaw. There ain't no trouble like that in your case, I'll gamble!"
"Oh, but there is. If I were pretty, like Rose Larsen-she's a girl that stays where I live-oh! I could just eat her up, she's so pretty, curly hair and big brown eyes and a round face like a boy in one of those medieval pictures-"
"That's all right about pretty squabs. They're all right for a bunch of young boys that like a cute nose and a good figger better than they do sense-Well, you notice I remembered you, all right, when you went and forgot poor old Eddie Schwirtz. Yessir, by golly! teetotally plumb forgot me. I guess I won't get over that slam for a while."
"Now that isn't fair, Mr. Schwirtz; you know it isn't-it's almost dark here on the porch, even with the lamps. I couldn't really see you. And, besides, I did recognize you-I just couldn't think of your name for the moment."
"Yuh, that listens fine, but poor old Eddie's heart is clean busted just the same-me thinking of you and your nice complexion and goldie hair and the cute way you talked at our lunch-whenever Hunt shut up and gave you a chance-honest, I haven't forgot yet the way you took off old man-what was it?-the old stiff that ran the commercial college, what was his name?"
"Mr. Whiteside?" Una was enormously pleased and interested. Far off and dim were Miss Magen and the distressing Mrs. Lawrence; and the office of Mr. Troy Wilkins was fading.
"Yuh, I guess that was it. Do you remember how you gave us an imitation of him telling the class that if they'd work like sixty they might get to be little tin gods on wheels like himself, and how he'd always keep dropping his eye-glasses and fishing 'em up on a cord while he was talking-don't you remember how you took him off? Why, I thought Mrs. Hunt-that-is-I've forgotten what her name was before Sandy married her-why, I thought she'd split, laughing. She admired you a whole pile, lemme tell you; I could see that."
Not unwelcome to the ears of Una was this praise, but she was properly deprecatory: "Why, she probably thought I was just a stuffy, stupid, ugly old thing, as old as-"
"As old as Eddie Schwirtz, heh? Go on, insult me! I can stand it! Lemme tell you I ain't forty-three till next October. Look here now, little sister, I know when a woman admires another. Lemme tell you, if you'd ever traveled for dry-goods like I did, out of St. Paul once, for a couple of months-nev-er again; paint and varnish is good enough for Eddie any day-and if you'd sold a bunch of women buyers, you'd know how they looked when they liked a thing, alrightee! Not that I want to knock The Sex, y' understand, but you know yourself, bein' a shemale, that there's an awful lot of cats among the ladies-God bless 'em-that wouldn't admit another lady was beautiful, not if she was as good-looking as Lillian Russell, corking figger and the swellest dresser in town."
"Yes, perhaps-sometimes," said Una.
She did not find Mr. Schwirtz dull.
"But I was saying: It was a cinch to see that Sandy's girl thought you was ace high, alrightee. She kept her eyes glommed onto you all the time."
"But what would she find to admire?"
"Uh-huh, fishing for compliments!"
"No, I am not, so there!" Una's cheeks burned delightfully. She was back in Panama again-in Panama, where for endless hours on dark porches young men tease young women and tell them that they are beautiful.... Mr. Schwirtz was direct and "jolly," like Panama people; but he was so much more active and forceful than Henry Carson; so much more hearty than Charlie Martindale; so distinguished by that knowledge of New York streets and cafés and local heroes which, to Una, the recent convert to New York, seemed the one great science.
Their rockers creaked in complete sympathy.
The perfect summer man took up his shepherd's tale:
"There's a whole lot of things she'd certainly oughta have admired in you, lemme tell you. I suppose probably Maxine Elliott is better-looking than what you are, maybe, but I always was crazy over your kind of girl-blond hair and nice, clear eyes and just shoulder-high-kind of a girl that could snuggle down beside a fireplace and look like she grew there-not one of these domineerin' sufferin' cats females. No, nor one of these overdressed New-York chickens, neither, but cute and bright-"